"I am sorry—I was sorry," said St. John, hesitating, "to refuse the help you offered in speaking in my chapel, but it is contrary to the rules of the church."
"Be not troubled. Thee follows thy light. Thee can do no otherways. Thee is but young yet," she said, with a motherly smile.
"I did not know you personally then," he said. "I should like to talk more with you, some time. I should esteem it a favor to have you tell me some of your experiences."
"Some time, if we can sit together in stillness, I might have something given me for thee; this is not the time," said Sibyl, with quiet graciousness.
A light laugh seemed to cut into the gravity of the conversation.
Both turned. Angelique was the center of a gay group to whom she was telling a droll story. Angie had a gift for this sort of thing; and Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey, Mrs. Van Arsdel and Mr. Van Arsdel were gathered around her as, with half-pantomime, half-mimicry, she was giving a street scene in one of her Sunday-school visitations. St. John laughed too; he could not help it. In a moment, however, he seemed to recollect himself, and sighed and said:
"It seems sometimes strange to me that we can allow ourselves to laugh in a world like this. She is only a child or she couldn't."
Sibyl looked tenderly at Angelique. "It is her gift," she said. "She is one of the children of the bride-chamber, who cannot mourn because the bridegroom is with them. It would be better for thee, Arthur St. John, to be more a child. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
St. John was impressed by the calm decision of this woman's manner, and the atmosphere of peace and assurance around her. The half-mystical character of her words fell in with his devout tendencies, and that strange, indefinable something that invests some persons with influence seemed to be with her, and he murmured to himself the words from Comus—
"She fables not, and I do feel her words
Set off by some superior power."